I hope you are free from financial problems, never go through hardships or have debts. I hope you do not have health problems, neither you nor your family. I hope you do not have difficult situations in your interpersonal relationships.
I hope you do not suffer from any of these ailments that are usually good reasons why men cry out to God.
Maybe you are free from problems and even live a righteous life. Therefore, you may come to think that you really do not need God.
However, it is important to take into account what the Bible establishes about how one can enter eternal life:
It is appointed for men to die once, and after this comes judgment. (Hebrews 9:27)
He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. (John 3:36)
These will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. (Matthew 25:46)
Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit... Save yourselves from this corrupt generation. (Acts 2:38; 2:40)
It is clear that it is necessary to believe in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to enter into eternal life in the presence of God.
Those who reject Jesus Christ will end up in eternal damnation.
So we can conclude that it is essential to believe in God and in Jesus Christ and start living a new life.
To bear witness that we have started a new life, it is also necessary that we be baptized in water in a conscious way.
Being baptized as an infant by our parents' decision was not a conscious personal decision.
There are those who claim not to believe in the existence of God or in any other god or supernatural power.
There are others who say they believe in God or believe in some higher power.
But they do not say exactly which God or it could be a god other than the God of Israel.
However, the Bible says that the God of Israel is the only true God.
He did great wonders and signs to establish his supremacy.
For example, when the chosen people left Egypt, the Red Sea opened.
So it is necessary to define oneself.
You have to believe in God but you also have to believe in the correct god, that is, the God of Israel.
Perhaps you have had the opportunity to read one of the many stories circulating on the Internet that deals with the question of whether God exists or not.
A man visits a barbershop and the barber says that God does not exist, that if he did there would not be so much evil in the world.
The customer does not know what to answer, but when he goes out into the street he sees a man with long hair. Then he returns and tells the barber that barbers do not exist, otherwise there would not be men with long hair.
The conclusion is that God does exist but because men do not look for him there is so much evil.
It must be known that God has created man with the faculty of free will, and that therefore man can choose to do good or do evil.
It is God's will that man do good, but many times man chooses to do evil.
God may allow us to go through certain difficulties to discover what we have in our hearts, or to see if we continue to say what we say when everything is going well when we have problems.
That is why the Word of God says in Acts 14:22 that we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of heaven.
God makes a double call on our lives: to believe in Him and to live according to His will.
It is important that you make the decision to believe in Jesus Christ.
The Word of God says that those who reject Jesus Christ will go to eternal punishment.
When you believe in Jesus Christ you can take hold of the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross of Calvary: you can claim the blood of the Spotless Lamb and use it to cleanse your sins before God.
But it is also important that you seek what God's will is for your life, that you stop doing certain things and start doing others.
But our first step is to believe in God and in His Son Jesus without doubting.
Maybe you need to read the Word of God on your own, or maybe you need to listen to sermon after sermon or testimony after testimony, until you are fully convinced and have come to believe without doubting.
In my personal case, I remember that I first repeated the famous prayer of the penitent in a chapter of the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International. But later on, many other times, I repeated the same prayer at the end of some Christian program on television.
The Lord Jesus promised that He would manifest Himself to those who keep His commandments. (John 14:21)
I experienced a similar confirmation when in August 1998 I woke up one night and saw an arm extended towards me in the middle of a brilliant white light, while I heard a voice inside me that said a single word: “come.”
If we say that we believe in God and in everything that is written in His Word, then we must also believe in the existence of Satan as the Word exposes it.
Unfortunately, Satan, demons and the powers of evil exist.
But now, being Christians, we must reject using these powers and seek exclusively the power of God, of His Holy Spirit, and of the angels.
We must distance ourselves from all knowledge and practice of non-Christian spiritual things.
For example, one day I gathered all my literature on astrology, yoga, I Tjing, Feng Shui, etc. and tore it all up.
When we are not close to Jesus, we are exposed to being taken at any moment by the forces of evil.
Demons influence our thoughts and put ideas for bad actions in our minds.
In my past life, I was guided by demons. I well remember that one day I was in the city of Antwerp in Belgium.
I was walking and crossing unfamiliar streets until my steps stopped and I looked across the street. I was standing right in front of an esoteric bookstore.
Bart De Wolf